


a heart kept on the sale shelf

by ephemeralstar



Series: old habits die hard [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Op-Shop, Take Your Fandom to Work Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 10:50:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14042655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralstar/pseuds/ephemeralstar
Summary: Clarke’s worked - volunteered - at the opshop down the road from her house since she was fifteen and her mother’s nagging and worrying became prominent enough to get under her skin and she decided she needed space. She knows the owner, was best friends with his son for as long as she can remember, and after about three years he trusts her with the keys every Monday, and she’s in charge of ordering drinks for the display behind the counter every week.Between college, her “ social life ”, and her mother, the thrift store doesn’t take up a lot of her time, but it’s a part of her life, part of her routine, and she’s been here long enough to learn the regulars.





	a heart kept on the sale shelf

**Author's Note:**

> i'm trying to get out my older work that i never finished, it's pretty unedited, but it has an ending now. have fun.

Clarke’s worked - _volunteered_ \- at the opshop down the road from her house since she was fifteen and her mother’s nagging and worrying became prominent enough to get under her skin and she decided she needed space. She knows the owner, was best friends with his son for as long as she can remember, and after about three years he trusts her with the keys every Monday, and she’s in charge of ordering drinks for the display behind the counter every week.

Between college, her “ _social life_ ”, and her mother, the thrift store doesn’t take up a lot of her time, but it’s a part of her life, part of her routine, and she’s been here long enough to learn the regulars.

Raven is the only other person working in the shop on a Monday, and also _sort of_ Clarke’s friend, is the only person in the _building_ young enough to care about Clarke’s social life. She rides a motorbike, wears a leather jacket, can pull off a rather intimidating smirk, and is probably the coolest person Clarke knows, but she also collects metal sculptures of birds and Clarke has seen her waxing poetic about no less than three old, ridiculously outdated machines that have been brought into the shop. Mostly they just sit around and gossip and sometimes complain about the owner of the shop’s truly shitty clothes sorting system when it was a slow day.

Monty runs the pawn shop three doors down with his best friend Jasper, and gets on famously with Raven for all the two are almost opposites. Apparently Raven was a local at their shop, buying outdated phones and computers with her spare change to fix up and sell for a profit in her downtime, and Clarke didn’t even know they were friends until she walked in on Raven having a very one-sided ‘argument’, for lack of a better word.

“Windows is _easily_ better than Mac, are you kidding me?” She cried, and Monty groaned, looking as though it was putting him in physical pain to not roll his eyes.

“ _No_ ,” he said slowly, “I’m _agreeing_ with you. We’ve been over this.” He told her, as though he were explaining it to a child. Raven didn’t take kindly to that, and glared at him for the rest of the day. Clarke doesn’t want to imagine what would happen if she brought up the ‘ _iPhone vs. Android_ ’ debate; she’s seen how Raven regards her phone like her own child, and Monty’s Samsung isn’t exactly small.

Jasper, on the other hand, has a steadily growing collection of beepers on his belt, and five different Nokias at any given time.

“I have _Snake_ on all of them.” He said, showing Clarke the little pixel game, currently paused, but with an impressive score. “But they’re all about ten years old, so the battery’s…” he hummed for a moment, “pretty crappy.” He finally settled on. “I’ve got six chargers at the store that I use on rotation, but mostly I just don’t like being bored.” One of his beepers goes off, making Clarke jump. “Monty’s telling me to hurry up.” Jasper frowned at the device on his hip, before tilting his head to the side at a painful angle, “or that he’s sorry.” He shrugged, grinning at Clarke. “Either way, lunch is ready.” He threw a goodbye over his shoulder and raced from the store.

John Murphy lives solely to destroy her neat, organized displays, she’s sure of it. Apparently he works the Friday afternoon shift, because when Clarke gets into work on a Monday morning, she has begun to play a less than enjoyable game of ‘spot the difference’ often with children's toys in crude poses, and a sticky note with his ‘artist's statement’. She knows it’s him because **a)** he signs his name, it’s a dead giveaway, and **b)** she caught him in the act, a few weeks after it started. She had to leave a lecture early, and she arrived just before closing, but finally putting a face to a name made it all the more satisfying to berate him for trying to pose three half-naked Barbies around a particularly phallic salt shaker for the second week in a row.

He was all but crying with laughter at the end of her rant, insisting that he only ever did it to amuse himself - _and now annoy her_ \- and as long as she caught it on Monday morning, ‘ _I’m not doing it during peak business hours, it’s four forty-eight, and it’s not as if we’re open on the weekend’_. He didn’t stop, but he did add Clarke on snapchat, and so he sends her hints about what to look for on Monday, and she calls him impolite terms when she finds them.

He sent her a dick pic once, he swears it was an accident. They don’t talk about it.

She talks to Wells on snapchat too, keeps him up to date with the local gossip, and he sends snaps of him looking increasingly stressed every time he pulls an all nighter to study for a test. He chose to go to an Ivy League school to be a poli-sci major, and as much as Clarke hates being away from him, she can’t deny that he’ll go far.

Consistency is what she begin to expect from the thrift shop, there’s Raven, looking as though she stepped out of a Rolling Stones cover shoot, and sort of like she wants to beat someone up; Monty and Jasper arguing about how ‘ _there’s no rule that says you're allowed to just take something if it hasn’t been bought in six months_ ’ and _‘no, Jasper, you don’t_ need _a walkman_ ’ - _‘I don’t_ need _a walkman, I_ want _a walkman_ ’; Murphy and his increasingly creative ways of ruining children's toys, and Wells’ snide but affectionate commentary via snapchat. She lives in a small town, and things hardly ever change, so it’s a shock when a new face joins her cast of regulars.

The first time she meets him, she’s shoulder deep in a refrigerator, trying - and failing - to fit nine water bottles in a space clearly designed for eight. She gives him a smile and holds up her finger in a clear gesture of ‘wait a minute’ before giving up entirely on the water bottle predicament and tending to the counter.

“How can I help you?” She asked, and the boy raked his eyes over the selection of drinks in the display behind her. He chose one, voice deep but fairly soft, and dropped the coins in her hand once she had fetched him the drink, careful not to let their hands touch. “Have a nice day!” She calls after him, and he looks back at her bright smile, and feels himself smile too.

He sees her again before the day is out, she takes her lunch break at midday, and makes her way across the road to the little takeout shop, order a small basket of fries and nothing else. Even after three years of going there on a weekly basis, she doesn’t know much about the shop beyond it’s name; The Weathered Mountain, known for good fries despite their seemingly revolving door of fry cooks.

When she sees the guy from earlier behind the counter, they smile at each other, but they don’t really talk apart from when he takes her order. After he brings out her food, she pulls out a bottle of water and eats in silence, sticking in her earphones and watching as others on their lunch break come and go. He doesn’t smile at them like he smiled at her, but perhaps she thinks she’s reading into things.

He calls goodbye to her - _only her, she notes_ \- once she’s leaving, and Clarke smiles brightly at him, waving before she jogs across the street.

She works - _volunteers_ \- on Mondays, always on Mondays, and by the time their little routine has become just that, he knows her order by heart - _it’s not exactly difficult_ \- and she knows exactly three things about him, but not one is his name.

He works at the takeout shop because it’s convenient and because he likes it, the first part she gathered because she’d never seen him drive their, so he must live nearby if it’s in walking distance. The second part she had heard from Jasper, when she’d asked him if his sort-of girlfriend, daughter of the owner, had heard anything. Apparently he doesn’t talk much, but he enjoys it.

He starts work at eleven, or around that time, she guesses, because he comes in at ten forty-five every Monday, sometimes he comes in earlier to look through some of the clothes or books down the back of the shop, but usually he just grabs his drink and leaves with a smile.

He’s new in town, because _duh_ , no-one really knows who he is or where he’s from. He sort of just… showed up one day and established himself. She’s not complaining, he’s nice to her and he always pays with exact change.

She finds out the crucial piece of the puzzle on Martin Luther King Day, it’s not like she had any plans, but she gives Raven the day off and puts up a sign saying that it’s fifty percent off on all non-fiction books. She doesn’t expect many customers, and she’s fairly certain The Weathered Mountain is closed anyways, so she lets herself fall into her Monday morning routine of searching for Murphy’s creation, dismantling his creation and planning this week’s displays.

“Come on, Bell!” There’s a familiar tone to the voice that fills the shop, and Clarke peers down the aisle where she had been stacking books and sees Sexy Fries Guy - _Raven’s nickname_ \- being dragged along by a girl who looked like she should be about high school aged, with long brown hair and intimidatingly perfect eyebrows.

It’s not even ten, she wasn’t expecting him at all, so when she accidentally drops a weathered encyclopaedia on her foot, at least her annoyance towards the book feels somewhat justified. The guy - _Bell!_ \- catches her muffled yelp of pain anyway, and gives the girl he’s with a budget to stick to before heading down the aisle to where Clarke is blushing a furious scarlet.

“You alright?” He asked, smirking at her. Clarke schools her expression into something reasonable before struggling to put the encyclopaedia on the highest shelf.

“I’m fine.” Clarke assures, but he takes the book from her hands and lifts the book to its destination with ease. “Clarke, by the way.” SHe offers in a rush, and the guy blinks at her, confused. “My name’s Clarke, I don’t think I ever told you that.” She managed, and he grinned at her easily.

“Bellamy.” They shake hands, and it feels strange after being around each other for so long, but suddenly a few books scatter to the ground and there’s a pair of green eyes peering at them from the other side of the bookcase.

“Bell.” It’s the voice from earlier, and suddenly a hand and a book come between Clarke and Bellamy, open to a page on medieval depictions of knights fighting giant snails. “It’s you.” The girl snickered, and Bellamy frowned.

“How is that me?” He asked, and the girl waved the book insistently, the amusingly distressed knight frozen on the paper.

“I dunno, it just is.” She said, before pulling her hand back through.

“ _O_ , don’t be a nuisance.” Bellamy groaned, and the girl was suddenly at the end of the aisle approaching Bellamy and Clarke swiftly, holding out her hand and puffing out her chest.

“I’m Octavia Blake. Nice to meet you.” She said, seriously, looking Clarke in the eye and shaking her hand firmly, before letting go and presenting Bellamy with another book. “It’s you.” She told him, once more. Clarke peers down at the book at where Octavia’s got her finger, and recognises it as an old history textbook that she had used back in high school and was probably donated once it became obsolete.

_Violent headache for two days after behaving awkwardly in front of a girl he fancied._

“What were you doing looking through Thomas Jefferson’s medical records?” Bellamy asked, even as a blush worked it’s way up his cheeks.

“Looking for stuff to embarrass you with.” Octavia answered with complete honesty, before turning to Clarke, bright smile on her face. “It’s like a superpower.” She enthused. Clarke couldn’t help the snort of laughter that escaped her, and her hand shot up to cover her mouth. At that moment, there was the distinct sound of the plastic flaps that cover the door moving, letting a new customer into the shop.

“I- uh,” Clarke gives Bellamy a smile, which he returns, nodding knowingly and stepping out of her way.

“You’ve got a job to do, I get it.” He paused, “don’t let Octavia keep you.” And from the girl in question came a loud raspberry, which devolved into a playful argument between the two.

“Hey Clarke, I’m just here to grab my sunglasses, this is the last place I remember having them.” It was Raven at the door, leather jacket, tousled hair, helmet in hand. Clarke rolls her eyes, emerging from behind the bookshelf. “What are you doing back there? You know we don’t have cameras, anyone could come in and take something.” As if to prove a point, she walked around behind the counter and pulled a can of coke from the fridge. Giving Clarke a long look, she smirks before dropping two dollars on the counter.

“I was-” Clarke began, but from Raven’s incredulous expression and snort of amusement, she figured Bellamy had stepped out behind her.

“Don't blame her, I just wanted her help to find a textbook for my sister.” He tried, though it was immediately undercut by Octavia’s sing-song, ‘ _no you didn’t’._ “I'm Bellamy.” He stepped out and offered his hand. Raven’s grin set Clarke on edge.

“Nice to meet you, _Clarke’s-Sexy-Fries-Guy_ , I'm Raven.”


End file.
